MEN WITHOUT DOUBT

Escape and Rogue Male have been used so often as descriptive comparisons, since their success established that particular genre, that I hesitate to use them again. And yet that is where this book belongs -- and, with the exception of The Fire and the Wood, the only one to rank with them justifiably. The mood is more masculine than Escape, closer perhaps to Rogue Male, though more out and out suspense and horror, rather than the psychology of escape. The story is that of an Englishman who goes to the old baronial castle of the Wolfsteins to fish. Damage to his car holds him there, and before long he is involved on the side of Erica von Wolfstein, married to the old baron, who is seeking refuge for a close friend, whose husband is a Jew accused by the Nazi for conspiracy in the Reichstag burning. The grim vaults provide a hiding place, and for the Meyers, a tomb, while the Englishman and Erica escape. The setting is well done, and keyed to the atmosphere of the story. The period is Germany of 1933. A first novel which should go well.